Three experiments examined the use of vibrotactile cues to guide an operator toward a target. Vibrotactile stimulation on the hand can provide spatially stabilizing cues for feedback of subtle changes in position. When such feedback is present, a deviation from the point of origin results in tactile stimulation indicating the direction and magnitude of the positional error. Likewise, spatial deviation from a desired position displayed tactually can provide robust position guidance and stabilization sufficient to improve the acquisition time and accuracy of fine cursor control. A major advantage of this mode of information representation is that it can be present at the same time as visual cues with minimal cross-modal interference. Our findings suggest that performance is actually enhanced when both tactile and visual cues are present. Although previous studies have suggested that various forms of tactile feedback can provide position guidance and stabilization, to our knowledge, this work is the first that details the effect of tactile feedback on target acquisition directly.

Here are some more detail about the experiments and some images:

•Experiment 1 – focued on where to place the tactors – tactor placements on the palm versus on the back of the hand, while targets appeared to the left and right.

•Experiment 3 – focused on the effectiveness of the tactile cues, do they facilitate the entire movement of just the initial movement toeard the target and the fine tuning on target – investigate the interaction between the near-target pulse rate and on-target cues and establish if there are performance differences between discrete and continuous distance information for target selection.